_GEORGE CRUIKSHANK AT HIS PRIME._
ALTERATIONS IN CRUIKSHANK'S STYLE.
Those who have studied the work of George Cruikshank from its
commencement to its close (and those only can be said to have done so
who are familiar with the satires described in the previous chapter),
cannot fail to be struck with the alterations which took place in his
style at different periods of the career we have already been
considering. George Cruikshank's peculiar style and manner, which enable
us to recognise his work at a glance, was the outcome of a very slow and
gradual process of development. In the first instance he closely copied
Gillray, but soon acquired a manner of his own, blending the two styles
after a fashion which is both interesting and amusing to follow. Soon,
however, the style of the master was discontinued, and gradually the
artist began to discover that the bent of his genius lay in altogether
another direction. Unlike Thomas Rowlandson, the moment Cruikshank
became an illustrator of books, he realized the fact that the style
adapted to graphic satire was unsuitable for the purposes of this branch
of art, and thenceforth he adopted a style differing from anything which
had gone before. The revolution thus accomplished (a singular proof of
the genius of the man) was effected without effort, and is strikingly
manifest in an early book illustration representing the execution of
Madame Tiquet and her accomplice, in 1699. The design to which we refer,
which we believe is rare and little known, was engraved by H. R. Cook,
from a design by the artist for the frontispiece to a collection of
narratives by Cecil, "printed for Hone," in 1819, and stands by virtue
of its force and character apart from most of the book illustrations of
the period. From the moment that the new style was adopted, the
artist's services were brought into requisition for the purposes of book
illustration; and from the time work of this kind began to come in, he
relaxed and afterwards discontinued the practice of caricature. It is as
an etcher and designer of book illustrations we shall henceforth have to
consider him, and in this character one of his famous illustrations to
"Greenwich Hospital" will be found superior to the whole series of
Rowlandson's careless overdrawn designs to the three "Tours" of Syntax
put together.
This alteration in the man's style after he took to book illustration is
known only to those familiar with his early caricatures. If you take,
for instance, the etching of _St. Swithin's Chapel_, of the "Sketch
Book," or _The Gin Shop_ in the "Scraps and Sketches"[85] (we are
speaking of course of the early _coloured_ impressions), and show them
together with any two of the caricatures we have named to a person who
had never before seen either, we will venture to say that he would
pronounce them without hesitation to be executed by entirely different
hands.
GEORGE'S IDEAS OF FEMALE BEAUTY.
After Lockhart's statement that George Cruikshank was capable of
designing an _Annunciation_, a _Beatification_, or an _Apotheosis_, we
must accept his assertion that he "understood the [human] figure
completely" with a certain amount of reservation. Perhaps he did; and if
he did, he certainly played some extraordinary tricks with the "figure"
aforesaid. The truth is, that we forget the artist's weaknesses, many
and glaring as they are, in the lustre of his unexampled _genius_. _The
Times_, in an otherwise laudatory article which it published after his
death, remarked that "there was not a single beautiful face or figure
probably in the whole range of Cruikshank's work." Now, although this is
not entirely true, there is at least so much of truth in it that we may
admit that the cases in which he has produced a pretty face or figure
are very few and far between, and even those cases seem rather to have
been the result of accident than of design. There is no getting over
the fact that George's ideas of female beauty were, to say the least of
them, peculiar: his women are fearfully and wonderfully made; they are
horse-faced; their eyebrows are black and strongly marked; their hair is
plastered to the sides of their faces, and meet bobs of hair at the back
of their heads; their waists are as thin as their necks; and they all
bear a strong family likeness to one another. _The Times_ assertion is
happily, however, so broad that it is easy to traverse and contradict
it. George's handsome women are so few, that it is difficult at the
moment to say where any of them may be found. I know at least of one
amazingly handsome one--the _London Barrow Woman_ in Hone's "Every-Day
Book." Some pretty servant girls will be found in the etching of _The
Sergeant Introducing his Dutch Wife to his Friends_ in "St. James's, or
the Court of Queen Anne," and I will undertake to point out at least
half a dozen pretty faces in the course of illustrations to "The Miser's
Daughter"; but after all, these are only exceptions to the general rule;
and it may be safely conceded that as a delineator of female beauty,
George could not hold a candle to John Leech, to John Tenniel, or even
to his own brother, Isaac Robert.
THE CRUIKSHANKIAN STEED.
As for the celebrated Cruikshankian steed, I give him up at once as an
utterly irreclaimable and unmanageable brute. Thackeray, writing in
1840, said, that "though our artist does not draw horses very
scientifically, to use the phrase of the _atelier_; he feels them very
keenly, and his queer animals, after one is used to them, answer quite
as well as better." Even on this subject, however, the ablest critics
have contradicted each other. George Augustus Sala tells us that the
artist "could draw the ordinary nag of real life well enough," and cites
by way of example the very horses of the celebrated _Deaf Postilion_, in
"Three Courses and a Dessert," which Thackeray had previously held up to
well-merited execration. He goes on to tell us that when George "essayed
to portray a charger or a hunter, or a lady's hack, or even a pair of
carriage horses, the result was the most grotesque of failures. The
noble animal has, I apprehend, forty-four 'points,' technically
speaking, and from the muzzle to the spavin-place, from the crest to
the withers, from the root of the dock to the fetlock, George was wrong
in them all. His fiery steed bore an equal resemblance to a Suffolk
punch with the head of a griffin and the legs of an antelope, and that
traditionary cockhorse on which the lady was supposed to ride to Banbury
Cross with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes."[86] His
peculiarities notwithstanding, George himself was in no wise conscious
of them, and never hesitated to introduce "the fiery untamed" into any
scene--battle or otherwise--in which the services of the eccentric
animal might be turned to account. We find him assisting Washington in
his triumphal journey to the capitol; astonishing the French squares in
the character of a Mameluke charger at the Battle of the Pyramids; and
leaping into the lake along with "Herne the Hunter," that peculiar
creation of the late Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, on which supernatural
occasion he comes out, as might have been expected, with peculiar force
and vigour.
Thackeray, moreover, says of his trees, that they were decidedly
original, "being decidedly of his own make and composition, not imitated
from any master;" another and a minor difficulty with the artist was a
boot, which he invariably drew half a foot too long. George lived in the
days of straps, and being strictly conservative in principle, when he
met with a pair of trousers, his idea of the "fitness of things" was not
satisfied until he pinned them to the wearer's feet with a pair of these
most uncomfortable appendages.
Against these shortcomings, which are a sufficient answer to those who
would give him credit for possessing the faculty of designing
"Annunciations, Beatifications, Apotheoses," and the like, we must set
his excellencies, the power and brilliancy of his imaginative faculties,
his extraordinary talents of conception and realization, the delicacy of
his manipulation and execution: in a word, the strong original "genius"
with which Lockhart credited him from the moment he had seen his "Points
of Humour." Examples of this "genius" might be cited by the thousand.
Look only at the famous "Sketch Book;" its recent republication has
placed it within the reach of every one of our readers. Look at the
_Sprig of Shelalegh_, the rollicking, whiskey drinking, fighting,
devil-may-care _expression_ he has thrown into that _piece of wood_;
turn to the sheet wherein he has recorded his _Recollections of the
Court of Common Pleas_, and study the group of lawyers' and witnesses'
faces therein contained. There is "genius" for you, if you will. If you
are overworked, turn to them; they will do you good, for they will not
only make you merry, but force upon you the conviction that the
conception which created them was essentially original. It is this
delightful originality of George Cruikshank which constitutes his
_genius_.
[Illustration:
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. "_Three Courses and a Dessert._"
THE DEAF POSTILION.
(_See p. 169._)]
[Illustration:
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. "_Three Courses and a Dessert._"
THE BRAINTREES.
"I doan't want to hurt thee, zo I leaves thee wi' un, but, mind--he'll
hold thy droat a little tighter than I did, if thee wags a hair."
_Face p. 171._]
"No plan!" "no ambition!" "not much industry!" so at least said
Lockhart. We may doubt whether even at the time it was spoken this
charge had any foundation of truth to rest upon; an answer to it at
least will be found in the fact that, before the mysterious spell had
fallen upon him we shall presently have to describe, this sterling and
indefatigable genius had already produced thousands upon thousands of
miraculous little drawings. From the mass of these wonderful creations
we propose now to select a few examples, choosing them in the first
instance from a graver type than some we shall presently have to
consider.
"Greenwich Hospital" gives us one of the very best drawings which
Cruikshank ever designed. The scene of the _Point of Honour_ is laid on
board the _Triumph_, at Spithead, at the time of the famous mutiny. A
detachment of marines with shouldered arms are drawn up on the quarter
deck, their drummer is beating to quarters, while all hands are
assembled to witness a degrading and demoralizing spectacle,--a sailor,
with his shoulders bare and his hands tied to the triangles, about to
receive punishment for disobedience to orders. Conspicuous amongst the
figures are two little middies, habited in the strange naval uniform of
sixty years ago. The illustration to _The Braintrees_, at page 90 of the
"Three Courses and a Dessert" is a marvellous specimen, not only of the
graphic power of the artist, but a triumph of the wood-engraver's
craft. In _The Gin Shop_ ("Sketches by Boz"), the artist selected a
subject which invariably enlisted his sympathy and called into action
the full power of his graphic satire. Mark the flaming gas, the huge
spirit vats, the gaudily painted pillars and mouldings; above all, the
strange people: the young man with his hat on one side who chaffs the
young ladies behind the bar, the gin-drinking female by his side, the
gin-loving cripple, the small boy who brings the family bottle to be
filled with gin, whose head barely reaches the counter, the gin-drinking
charwoman to the left, and the quarrelsome gin-drinking Irish customers
at the back. Everything in this picture reeks of _gin_; the only persons
not imbibing it are the proprietor and his dowdy barmaids, whom I have
no manner of doubt the artist intended to look captivating.
"What a fine touching picture of melancholy desolation," remarks
Thackeray, "is that of 'Sikes and the dog.' The poor cur is not too well
drawn, the landscape is stiff and formal; but in this case the faults,
if faults they be, of execution rather add to than diminish the effect
of the picture: it has a strange, wild, dreary, broken-hearted look; we
fancy we see the landscape as it must have appeared to Sikes, when
ghastly and with bloodshot eyes he looked at it." The etching of
_Jonathan Wild Discovering Darrell in the Loft_ ["Jack Sheppard"]
reminds one, in its treatment, of Rembrandt, for the work of Cruikshank,
be it observed, distinctly shows in its results that he studied both
Hogarth and Rembrandt. The effect the artist has produced is wonderful;
the ray of light thrown through the gloom upon the figure of Darrell as
he stands against the wall, sword in hand, is capitally managed, "while
the intricacies of the tile-work, and the mysterious twinkling of light
among the beams are excellently felt and rendered."[87] _Simon Renard
and Winwike on the Roof of the White Tower_ ["Tower of London"] is
another admirable drawing. The scene is laid on the platform of one of
the antique guns which frown from the embrasures of the river face of
the fortress. The head of Renard is not well drawn. The character of
the ambassador gives one the idea of a Spanish Iago, a clever,
calculating knave, whom we should credit with the possession of a broad
and lofty forehead, indicative of deep and concentrated thought; in the
etching, however, before us, he has none at all, a deficiency
compensated by puffy cheeks and a preposterous beak. These
imperfections, which in another artist would mar the drawing, serve only
to throw its excellencies into prominent notice. The lights and shadows
are most effectively rendered, and the setting sun throws a broad light
upon the features of the warder, who has laid aside his arquebus while
conversing with the wily Spaniard. Of the many who have noticed the
well-known etching of _Born a Genius and Born a Dwarf_ ["Comic Almanack,
1847"], not one (so far at least as we know) has ever mentioned its
origin. The subject was prompted by one of the last entries in the diary
of poor Benjamin Robert Haydon, who died by his own hand on the 22nd of
June, 1846, his corpse being found at the foot of his colossal picture
of _Alfred the Great and the First British Jury_. The entry runs as
follows:--"Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week, B. R. Haydon 133-1/2
(the 1/2 a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!" In the
etching which shows us _Randulph and Hilda Dancing in the Rotunda at
Ranelagh_ ["Miser's Daughter"], he brings us face to face with our
great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers; wherever he got his authority
from, the huge circular hall with galleries and arches running round it,
illuminated by a thousand lamps, and the curious orchestra with the
old-fashioned sounding-board above, are no freak of the artist's
imagination. The etching possesses a wondrous charm of reality. We find
ourselves assisting, as it were, at one of the masquerades described in
"Sir Charles Grandison"; many of the company are in fancy dresses, and
we find it difficult to realize, in these broad-cloth days, that the
gentlemen in the velvet coats, with gold-bound embroidered waistcoats,
silk stockings, silver gilt rapiers, and laced hats, dancing minuets
with Chinamen, harlequins, scaramouches, templars, and other
fancifully-dressed persons, are simply wearing the every-day costume of
men of fashion of the day.
MANNERISM.
Perhaps more than any other comic artist of past or present time, George
is distinguished by his mannerisms. His horses, his women, the costumes
of his male and female characters, the cut of their garments and of
their boots, the arrangement of their hair, will proclaim his
individuality anywhere; and yet, if you look at any of the designs which
he executed in his best and brightest days, before he took up with the
mania which contributed, as we shall presently see, so largely to the
ruin of his artistic genius, fame, and fortunes, we cannot fail to be
impressed with the quaintness of his imagination. In this quaintness and
originality lie the charm and freshness which is the peculiar
characteristic of his designs. Unlike those of other artists, you may
turn over volume after volume of his sketches, and be conscious of no
sense of weariness. Much of this no doubt is due to their constant
variety. Unlike the generality of modern illustrators, he is not limited
to the costumes and incidents of the every-day commonplace life of the
nineteenth century; he does not confine himself to humour; his fancy
takes a wider range, and revels in subjects of wonder, diablery, and
romance. Gnomes and fairies, devils and goblins, knights, giants,
jesters, and morris dancers are continually passing before us; there is
an endless succession of novelties, treated with a quaintness of fancy
which distinguishes it above all others; there is a ceaseless variety in
his _dramatis personae_, while the characters are as various as the
subjects. In these characteristics seem to lie the secret of the
pleasure which his illustrations, whether they be drawn on wood or
etched on the copper, never fail to inspire.
The sale and purchase of Peter Schlemihl's _Shadow_ has been noticed by
Thackeray. We see the Old Gentleman neatly packing up his purchase after
the manner of an "old clo'" dealer; he has just "lifted the _shadow of
one leg_; he is going to fold it back neatly, as one does the tails of a
coat, and will stow it, without any creases or crumples, along with the
other black garments that lie in that immense pocket of his."[88]
Another illustration in the same book shows us Peter, after he has
repented of his bargain (as vendors invariably do who indulge in
mercantile transactions of this character) in ardent pursuit of his
shadow, which the tantilizing purchaser has let out for the occasion.
Can anything more ludicrous be imagined than this scampering piece of
intangibility? The etching of _Sailors Carousing_ ["Greenwich
Hospital"], executed in 1826, before the artist had altogether
discontinued the style and manner of Gillray, would have delighted the
heart of that accomplished caricaturist. An old one-eyed salt presides
over a vast bowl of punch, the contents of which he is engaged in
distributing to the company. One enthusiastic tar foots it with such
vigour that he cannons against a potman, upsetting him and the measure
of scalding liquor he carries over another angry, blaspheming sailor
man; another sea worthy, snoring drunk, has converted his quart pot into
an impromptu pillow, his own recumbent form serving the purposes of a
footstool to a companion. The females are a combination of the styles of
Gillray and Cruikshank, and, with one exception, are old, ugly, and
preposterously fat. A comical illustration in the same book is called,
_Paying off a Jew Pedlar_. The unhappy man (who had cheated the
sailors), innocent of danger, is seated on a grating with his combs,
spy-glasses, necklaces, ribbons, and all the rest of his "Brummagem"
trumpery, spread out before him. The men, who have slily hitched a rope
to the grating, suddenly give it a hoist, and away slides Moses, with
all his wares and trumpery, into the hold together! How poor Seymour
would have revelled in that admirable tailpiece in "Three Courses and a
Dessert," where an unhappy wight, pursued by a bull, manages to scramble
atop of a gate-post (the only part free from spikes), to find his escape
cut off on one side by a couple of bull-dogs, and on the other by a
_chevaux-de-frise_ terminating in a horse pond! We meet with a solemn
piece of fun in _Simpkin Dancing to the Musicians_, one of the
illustrations to the celebrated "New Bath Guide" of Christopher Anstey--
"And I thought it was right, as the music was come,
To foot it a little in Tabitha's room."
[Illustration:
"THE WITCH'S SWITCH."
"ABSENT-MINDEDNESS."
"THE TETE-A-TETE."
"THE DENTIST."
"BAT BOROO."
SKETCHES FROM GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S "THREE COURSES AND A DESSERT."
_Face p. 175._]
_The Last Cab Driver_ ["Sketches by Boz"] deserves a passing notice,
because it has preserved from oblivion a class of vehicles which has
long since disappeared from the London streets. It looked for all the
world like the section of a coffin set on end, the seat (which was
intended to accommodate only one person besides the driver) occupying
the centre. The cabman being a very _mauvais sujet_, we find the
surroundings (after the artist's practice) in strict keeping with his
character. The building past which he drives is marked "Old Bailey";
whilst a snuff manufacturer in the street at the back advertises himself
as the vendor of "Real Irish Blackguard."
WAVERLEY NOVELS.
The dry, quaint humour of the author of "Waverley" exactly suited the
quaint imaginings of our artist. Both Scott and Cruikshank delighted in
the supernatural and the marvellous, and this is why some of the most
characteristic of the artist's designs are to be found in his
illustrations to the "Waverley Novels." In one of these he shows us the
illustrious Dominie at the moment, when reaching over to gather a
water-lily, he falls souse into the Slough of Lochend, in which he
forthwith became bogged up to the middle, his plight drawing from him of
course his favourite ejaculation of amazement. By the assistance of some
women the luckless Dominie was extracted from his position, justifying
the remark of one of his assistants, that "the laird might as weel trust
the care of his bairn to a potato-bogle." Which was the most helpless of
the two men--the Laird of Dumbiedikes, or the illustrious Dominie--it
would be difficult to say; both these most original characters took a
powerful hold on the artist's imagination, and as a natural consequence
the ideas of Scott were completely realized. A very comical design is
that in which he shows us the worthy but witless laird with his laced
cocked hat and empty tobacco pipe,[89] and his hand extended "like the
claw of a heraldic griffin," when he managed to utter something beyond
his usual morning greeting, and frightened Jeannie into the belief that
he had so far "screwed his courage to the sticking place" as to venture
on a matrimonial proposal, to which unwonted effort of imagination his
intelligence, however, proved altogether unequal.
ALLITERATIVE DESIGNS.
In the "Comic Almanack" will be found many examples of George's tendency
to graphic alliteration. _The Fall of the Leaf_ affords a capital
specimen of the kind of design to which we allude. The leaf of the
dinner-table has been so insecurely fastened that it falls, burying with
it the mistress of the house, the fish, the champagne, a sherry
decanter, a vase of flowers,--everything, in fact, to which it formed a
treacherous and unreliable support; Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" lies in
a corner of the room, and the walls are hung with appropriate subjects,
such as the Fall of Foyers, the Falls of Niagara, Falls of the Clyde,
and so on. An illustration of a similar kind will be found in _Taurus--a
Literary Bull_. The animal has rushed into a printing office and
scattered the compositors right and left; some seek shelter beneath
their frames, one clambers wildly up the shelves of a paper case, while
others scuttle over the frames, and one man, too wholly dismayed and
bewildered to run, brandishes a stool in helpless imbecility. The bull
is perhaps the most astonished of the _dramatis personae_, and evidently
wonders into what manner of place fate has brought him. The walls are
pasted with appropriate advertisements: "Some Account of the Pope's
Bull," "A Cock and Bull Story," "Theatre Royal, Haymarket--John Bull"
"To be Sold by Auction, the Bull Inn," "Abstract of the Act against
Bull-baiting," and so on. In _Libra Striking the Balance_ (same year), a
dishonest tradesman has been detected in using false weights and
measures. The beadle holds up a pair of scales, one of which weighs very
much heavier than the other. The wretched culprit, conscious, all too
late, that honesty would have proved "the best policy" for himself,
leans against his shelves the picture of sullen and detected guilt. The
window of the shop bears on it the painted _legend_ of "The cheapest
shop in London." Leaning against the counter we find a programme of the
"City Theatre," announcing the performance of "Measure for Measure": to
conclude with "Honest Thieves"; an officer outside (surrounded by a
deeply interested crowd) is engaged in breaking up a second pair of
dishonest scales. Chronology, difference in politics, character, tastes,
and disposition, are most amusingly set at defiance in the etching
entitled _The Revolution at Madame Tussaud's_ [1847]: Mary Queen of
Scots "treads a measure" with William Penn the Quaker; Fox and Pitt make
long noses at each other from opposite sides of the room; O'Connell
shakes hands with Freschi, to whom our old friend the elderly country
gentleman offers a friendly pinch of snuff; William Shakespeare flirts
with an almond-eyed Chinese woman; Henry the Eighth smokes a long
churchwarden with Judge Jefferys; Lord Byron (with greater propriety)
exchanges friendly greetings with Jean Jacques Rousseau; whilst the
great Napoleon unbends, as chroniclers assert that he was wont to do,
and waltzes round the room with Madame Tussaud, and Britannia (to the
uproarious delight of Sir William Wallace) rasps her trident across her
shield, by way of accompaniment to the fiddle of the Saturnine Paganini.
The fun of these side splitting designs is only equalled by their
variety. The "Almanack" of 1838 introduces us to the inevitable row
which forms the wind-up of a Hibernian _festa_; chairs, sticks,
shovels,--anything that comes to hand is used without fear or favour;
men, women, children struggle together in inextricable confusion amidst
the _debris_ of wrecked furniture, broken glass, and battered pewter;
high above the din drone the nasal tones of the piper; while amidst the
infernal clatter "the praist" vainly endeavours to re-establish order
and make himself heard. _Theatrical Fun Dinner_ (1841) represents the
close of the banquet. Hamlet is already too far gone to know what he is
doing; Othello belabours Iago with a bottle; Shylock and Antonio
fraternize; whilst a reconciliation is established between Macbeth and
Macduff, who chink glasses by way of cementing their friendship; Sir
John Falstaff lights his pipe at Bardolph's nose; whilst Romeo hands up
a glass of something short and strong to his Juliet in the balcony. 1842
gives us the celebrated etching of "_Gone!_" an auctioneer "knocking
down" a bust of Socrates; at the word "_gone_" the flooring gives way,
and auctioneer, buyers, and Socrates, with all their surroundings,
descend with a simultaneous crash into the cellars below. Drowning men
catch at straws, and the spectacled visage of the auctioneer, as he
clings wildly to his rostrum, is a perfect study of terrified
imbecility.
In looking at these quaint designs, the mind of any one possessed of any
imagination at all cannot fail to be impressed with a sense of the
original train of thought which must have characterized the man who
could conceive and realize them. How appropriately and admirably, even
in trivial matters, the details of the design are worked out! If the
reader will refer to the etching in "St. James'," where the sergeant
places the boot of his master, the Duke of Marlborough, on a map of
Flanders, he will at once see what we mean. The action is accidental;
and yet where could the boot have been placed with greater propriety?
for surely if any country was under the heel of the great English
captain, it was Flanders. Nothing to equal these designs are ever seen
in these days, perhaps nothing like them will ever be seen again. There
are many excellent comic designs produced by our artists of to-day; but
with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Caldicott and Colonel Seccombe, they
lack _character_. You pass them by, and straightway forget them. Not so
with these admirable little designs; you turn to them again and again,
and each time with a refreshing sense of pleasure. Herein seems to lie
the power of true genius--that its productions give not only a sense of
freshness and delight, but that the sensation so conveyed will not die.
There are people, I believe, on whom they produce no such impression;
such people, as regards comic art, are for all practical purposes "dry
bones," and to dry bones such as these the pencil of "honest George"
will appeal in vain.
Some writers on the subject of Cruikshank and his work would have us
believe that he developed his highest powers of imagination and fancy,
and achieved his highest reputation, when depicting subjects of a fairy
or supernatural order. Whether these scribes be right or whether they be
wrong, there is no doubt that he discovered for himself an enchanted
land of mountain and streamlet, of meadow and waterfall, of gnomes and
fairies, of demons, witches, and of giants. The process by which he
attained his excellence as an illustrator of fairy lore and legend has
been related by himself in his own simple, unpolished words in the
(so-called) "Fairy Library." Unquestionably the opportunity which these
subjects afforded of exercising untrammelled his marvellous gifts of
imagination and fancy, and of realizing objects which owe their being to
the creative faculties of his mind, were eagerly embraced by the artist;
but, although the results were singularly weird and often very
beautiful, I find myself obliged to differ from those who would have us
believe that in realizing subjects of this kind he attained his highest
excellence. The charm of George Cruikshank's talent lies in the fact
that notwithstanding his defects in drawing, _everything_ he took in
hand is impressed with the stamp of a strong and original genius; it is
like nothing we have seen before; every one of his designs is marked
with distinctive features of beauty, quaintness, or originality peculiar
to himself.
[Illustration:
"THE ELVES AND THE COBBLER."
"THE WAITS OF BREMEN AND THE ROBBERS."
FROM GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S EDITION OF "GERMAN POPULAR STORIES."
_Face p. 180._]
The "German Popular Stories" probably contain the most striking specimens
of Cruikshank's power as a designer of _fairy_ subjects. In reference to
these illustrations, our great critic, Mr. Ruskin, says: "They are of
quite sterling and admirable art, in a class precisely parallel in
elevation to the character of the tales which they illustrate; and the
original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements
of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt, in
some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "_The Two Elves_,"
says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches,
are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen
fun and inimitably happy invention, that I have not found their equal in
comic etching anywhere ... the picturesque details of the room are etched
with the same felicitous intelligence; but the marvel of the work is in
the expression of the strange little faces, and the energy of the comical
wee limbs."[90] In _The Witches' Frolic_ ["Letters on Demonology and
Witchcraft"], we find a happy blending of the terrible and the grotesque.
Look at the old hags floating out to sea in their tubs; and the strange,
uncanny thing with dreadful eyes bobbing up and down midway between the
foremost old woman and the distant vessel. The _thing_ may be a ship, it
may be a fish, or it may be a fiend,--in the dim half light we cannot tell
what,--but it is horribly suggestive of nightmare, and makes one laugh as
well as shudder. Some ghostly goblins, the creations of George's weird
fancy, will be found in "The Omnibus"; we see them following a ghostly
ship manned by ghostly mariners, and we find in the same book ghostly
Dutchmen playing a game of diabolical leap-frog with Australian kangaroos.
In one illustration he introduces us to a cheerful assembly of ancestral
ghosts: there is the ghostly saucer-eyed head of the family, with a
ghostly hound peeping beneath his chair, a ghostly grandmother, half a
dozen ghostly spinster aunts, a ghostly butler, a ghostly cook, a ghostly
small boy, two ghostly candles; and lastly, a ghostly cat. Small wonder
that under the influence of such ghostly surroundings the hair of the
affrighted ghost-seer stands erect in the extremity of his terror.
This same book contains, too, the celebrated etching of _Jack
o'Lantern_, probably the best illustration of the supernatural which we
owe to the pencil and weird imagination of the artist. "Talk of Fuseli
and his wind-bag, there is real vivid imagination enough in this to make
a whole academy of Fuselis. It is just an Egyptian darkness, with
breaking through it, above a bog-hole, some black bulrushes, and above
them a bending, leathery goblin exulting over some drowned traveller,
the meteor lamp he carries casting a downward flicker on the dark water.
Such darkness, such wicked speed, such bad, Puck-like malice, such
devilry, Hoffman and Poe together could not have better devised. Many a
May exhibition has not half the genius in all its pictures that focuses
in that gem of jet." The description is admirable; but Walter Thornbury
has altogether misconceived the artist's idea. _Jack o'Lantern_ is
simply misguiding a belated traveller into a bog, and the elfin grin
which pervades his countenance testifies to the delight he takes in his
mischievous employment. The words of the song in Dryden's _King Arthur_
convey the best possible description of this wondrous conception:--
"Hither this way, this way bend,
Trust not that malicious fiend;
Those are false, deluding lights,
Wafted far and near by sprights;
Trust 'em not, for they'll deceive ye,
And in bog and marshes leave ye,
If you step no danger thinking,
Down you fall, a furlong sinking;
'Tis a fiend who has annoyed ye,
Name but Heav'n, and he'll avoid ye."
By way of contrast to all these, I would turn to the celebrated and
much-too-often-described _Triumph of Cupid_, of the "Table Book"; but as
the praises of this remarkable composition may already be counted by the
ream, I have no intention whatever of contributing a further addition.
[Illustration:
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. _From "The Universal Songster."_
"THE OLD COMMODORE."]
[Illustration:
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. _From "The Universal Songster._"
"A tall figure her sight engross'd,
And it cried, 'I beez Giles Scroggin's Ghost.'"
_Face p. 182._]
A notice, however, of George Cruikshank's supernatural work would be
incomplete without some reference to his _devils_. From time immemorial
our idea of His Satanic Majesty has been associated with the
distinguishing appendages of horns, hoofs, and a cow's tail. "A conceit
there is," says old Sir Thomas Browne, "that the devil commonly
appeareth with a cloven hoof, wherein, although it seems excessively
ridiculous, there may be somewhat of truth, and the ground thereof at
first might be his frequent appearing in the shape of a goat, which
answers the description." George Cruikshank too well apprehended the
cunning nature of His Satanic Majesty to suppose him idiotic enough to
introduce his hoofs, his horns, or his tail into the company of all
sorts and conditions of men. It will be remembered that Fitz Dottrel
takes leave to doubt the identity of the devil who waits upon him in the
character of a body servant. "You cannot," he says, "cozen _me_. Your
shoe's not cloven, sir; you are whole hoofed." But "Pug" simply and
unaffectedly assures him, "Sir, that's a popular error,--deceives
many."[91] Like "Pug," George Cruikshank's devils accommodate
themselves, their appearance, and their costume to the prejudices of the
persons they design to serve. With saints and perverse sinners it is
obvious that any attempt at disguise would be futile; but with so
respectable a person as a Dutch burgher, or so suspicious an individual
as an English lawyer, the case is altogether different. We have
specimens of the respectable devil in the "long-legged bondholder" who
appears to his unfortunate Dutch debtor; the portly, well-dressed little
man in the "Gentleman in black"; and the seedy looking old clothes
dealer of "Peter Schlemihl." Quite a different devil to any of these is
the devil that interviews St. Nicholas, the devil whom St. Medard
circumvented, or the simple-minded and unfortunate devil that fell into
the clutches of St. Dunstan. This last is probably the most comical
_diabolique_ that Cruikshank ever designed. In an evil hour this
miserable fiend had irritated the saint by mimicking his musical powers;
and growing bolder with impunity, even ventured to challenge his skill
as a mechanic, by doubting his ability to fit a shoe to his own
diabolical hoof. The saint promptly whipped up the leg, and it was not
until this simple devil found himself in the clutches of the saint, that
he fully comprehended the prodigious powers of the holy personage he had
ventured to chaff. In spite of his howls and frantic efforts to escape,
the iron shoe is remorselessly fitted, and nail after nail driven into
the quick. Imagine the sufferings of that poor devil; observe his
comically distorted countenance as he bellows with agony and impotent
rage; how his tail curls round his leg in the extremity of his anguish!
The worst perhaps has to follow, for in spite of the agony of his
crippled hoof, a deed will have to be "signed, sealed, and delivered,"
by which his claim to a legion of sinful souls has to be for ever
released and extinguished. It is worthy of remark that George
Cruikshank's devils--simple-minded, weak creatures, more mischievous
than really wicked, in all their contests with the saints (Saint Anthony
excepted) invariably come off second best.
In estimating his merits, the genius of George Cruikshank may not
inaptly be compared to a diamond. One facet often emits more brilliant
coruscations than any other; and if we may be permitted to compare his
powers of realizing the grave, the comical, the supernatural, and the
terrible to the facets of a diamond, we think the one which would be
found to emit the most brilliant flashes of light would be the last.
Thackeray, one of the most friendly and most competent of his critics,
would seem to have considered that much of his power was shown in
depicting subjects of this kind. "What a fine eye," he tells us, in his
famous article which has supplied the backbone--the muscles--the very
integuments of so many others,--"what a fine eye the artist has, what a
skilful hand, and what a sympathy for the wild and dreadful!"
[Illustration:
_Designed, Etched and Published by_ GEORGE CRUIKSHANK._November 1st,
1829._
THE GIN SHOP.
"--now, Oh dear, how shocking the thought is,
They makes the gin from aquafortis:
They do it on purpose folks' lives to shorten,
And tickets it up at two-pence a quartern."--_New Ballad._
_Face p. 184._]
From an early period of his career as an etcher and designer, George had
waged a deadly war with gin,--that potent, insidious, and evil spirit of
London; the most priceless services he rendered to the cause of
temperance being unquestionably given long before he had any notion of
joining the ranks of the total abstainers. Like the _Triumph of Cupid_,
the well-known _Gin Juggernaut_ of the "Sketch Book" requires nothing
more than a passing allusion. An example less known but quite as
admirable will be found in the "Scraps and Sketches." It is called _The
Gin Shop_,[92] and shows us the interior of a London gin palace. In
place of the usual barrels, around the walls are ranged coffins,
labelled respectively: "Deady's Cordial;" "Blue Ruin;" "Gin and
Bitters;" the largest (a huge one) being marked "Old Tom." Death,
habited as a watchman, has baited a huge gin trap, wherein stand five
persons (two of them children, besides a baby in arms), _all_ imbibing
the deadly liquid. The wretched woman with the infant has actually
placed her foot on the spring, and so great is the artist's power of
realization, that we momentarily expect to see the horrible thing close
with a snap! A skeleton, whose fleshless skull is masked with a pleasant
female countenance, officiates as barmaid, and behind her yawns a pit,
on the further side of which a circle of evil spirits curvet around a
huge still. Just such a weird scene as would strike a sympathetic chord
in the artist's fancy was found for him in Scott's novel of "Red
Gauntlet." The episode selected for illustration is the frightful
adventure of Hutcheon and Dougal MacCallum. "When midnight came, and the
house was quiet as the grave, the silver whistle sounded as sharp and
shrill as if Sir Robert was blowing it, and up got the two old
serving-men and tottered into the room where the dead man lay. Hutcheon
saw enough at the first glance; for there were torches in the room,
which showed him the foul fiend in his ain shape, sitting on the laird's
coffin! Ower he couped, as if he had been dead. He could not tell how
long he lay in a trance at the door; but when he gathered himself, he
cried on his neighbour, and getting nae answer, raised the house, when
Dougal was found lying dead within twa steps of the bed where his
master's coffin was placed. As for the whistle, it was lost ance and
aye, but mony a time it was heard at the top of the house on the
bartizan and among the auld chimneys and turrets, where the howlets have
their nests." The coffin of the dead laird lies in state on a table
covered with black cloth, richly ornamented with his armorial bearings;
at the foot of the bier stands his black plumed helmet; while atop of
the coffin crouches the grinning ape with the laird's whistle in his
paw; on the ground, as they have been tossed about by the mischievous
beast, lie his rapier, gauntlet, and other military trappings. The
furniture, the fittings, the sombre hangings, the gloomy ancestral
portraits, all are in keeping with the weird scene and its surroundings.
_The Death of Sikes_, and _Fagin in the Condemned Cell_ (especially the
latter) have been described any number of times, and the circumstances,
moreover, under which the latter design was conceived, told invariably
wrong. In the _Murder of Sir Rowland Trenchard_ ["Jack Sheppard"], we
have a Rembrandtish etching, quite equalling in power and intensity that
of _Fagin in the Condemned Cell_. The gloomy depths of the well hole are
illumined only by the pine torch of the frightened Jew, as Wild hammers
with his bludgeon on the fingers of the doomed wretch who, maimed and
faint from loss of blood, clings with desperate tenacity to the
bannister, from which his relaxing grip will presently plunge him into
the black abyss below.
The "Tower of London" introduces us to two scenes of a dismal and
terrible character in the etching entitled _Xit Wedded to the
Scavenger's Daughter_, the artist carries us to a gloomy torture
chamber, dimly lighted by a solitary lantern. On the framework of the
rack sits the dwarf Xit, his limbs compressed in the grip of the
frightful instrument called the "Scavenger's daughter," while Simon
Renard, scarcely able to repress a smile, interrogates the comical
little figure at his leisure. Behind him stands Sorrocold, the surgeon;
and in the farther corner Mauger (the headsman), Nightgall, and an
assistant torturer, recline against the wall. The feeble rays of the
lantern throw an obscure light upon the gloomy walls decorated with the
stock in trade of the torturers, thumb-screws, gauntlets, collars,
pinchers, saws, chains, and other horrible and suggestive implements.
Affixed to the ceiling is a steel pulley, the rope which traverses it
terminating with an iron hook and two leathern shoulder straps. Facing
the gloomy door stands a brazier filled with blazing coals, in which a
huge pair of pinchers are suggestively heating. Reared against the side
of a deep dark recess is a ponderous wheel--broad as that of a wagon,
and twice the circumference; and next it the iron bar with which the
bones of those condemned to die by this most horrible torture were
broken while alive. The etching of _Mauger Sharpening his Axe_ is nearly
as celebrated as that of _Fagin in the Condemned Cell_. "A wonderful
weird dusk, with no light but that which glimmers on the bald scalp of
the hideous headsman, who, feeling the edge of his axe with his thumb,
grins with a devilish foretaste of his pleasure on the morrow. I need
scarcely say that all the poetry, dramatic force, mystery, and terror of
the design is attributable to Cruikshank, and not to Ainsworth."[93]
Scenes still more realistically terrible even than these, such as the
_Massacre at Tullabogue_, _The Rebel Camp on Vinegar Hill_, and the
_Executions at Wexford Bridge_, will be found in Maxwell's "History of
the Irish Rebellion."
Mr. Lockhart, we may remember, advised the artist in the early part of
his career to "think of Hogarth," and throughout the whole of George
Cruikshank's designs of the graver caste the influence of the study of
Rembrandt and of Hogarth will be apparent to those acquainted with the
characteristics of these great artists. In the case of Rembrandt it is
manifest in the deep shadows, penetrated by broad but skilfully treated
rays of light, throwing the salient parts of the design into prominent
but pleasing relief; in the case of Hogarth it is shown in minute
attention to details of a character singularly appropriate to the
designs. Delineators of subjects of greater pretension are frequently
content to throw all their sympathies, their energies, into the
elaboration of their leading figure or figures: the attitude, the face,
the features, the hands, the costume, leave nothing to be desired, while
the rest of the composition is slurred or neglected. This is not the
case with Cruikshank, every part of his work bears witness to his
careful attention to detail; no part of it is elaborated at the expense
of the rest; from the tenants of the room down to the smallest and most
insignificant ornament on the chimney-piece, everything appears as
distinct as it would appear in actual every-day life.
But this study of Rembrandt and of Hogarth, this minute attention to
detail, this careful and conscientious elaboration, would have done
little for George Cruikshank if he had not possessed in an eminent
degree that faculty of creation, otherwise of originality, which men
call _genius_. Various descriptions of this gift have been attempted by
eminent men, but the most felicitous seems to us to be that given by
Robert William Elliston: "A true actor," says this distinguished
comedian, "must possess the power of _creation_, which is _genius_, as
well as the faculty of imitation, which is only _talent_." Substitute
the word "artist" for the word "actor," and the remark will apply with
equal felicity to the subject of our present chapter. It was this same
gift of genius which, whilst it enabled the artist to lend a sentient
expression to such unpromising subjects as a barrel, a wig-block, a jug
of beer, a pair of bellows, or an oyster, imparted to his drawings a
piquancy which has elevated these apparently insignificant designs into
perfectly sterling works of art. The reader who is fortunate enough to
number amongst his books the first half-dozen volumes of "Bentley's
Miscellany" and "Ainsworth's Magazine," "The Omnibus," "The Table Book,"
"The Comic Almanack," possesses a series of designs, drawn and etched by
the hand of the master himself, the value of which is yearly increasing,
not only because they are becoming scarcer and scarcer every day, but
because nothing like them--under the conditions in which book
illustration is now produced--will ever be seen again.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] The "Sketch Book" and "Scraps and Sketches" have recently been
republished; but the impressions from the sadly worn plates give but
little idea of the exquisite originals.
[86] Sala, in _Gentleman's Magazine_, May, 1878.
[87] Thackeray, _Westminster Review_.
[88] Thackeray, in the _Westminster Review_, June, 1840.
[89] This idea of the empty pipe is splendid, there never is any
tobacco in it; a better notion of absolute forgetfulness--of
inability to exercise the most trifling effort of memory--could not
be conveyed.
[90] "Etching and Etchers."
[91] Ben Jonson's "The Devil is an Ass."
[92] This was written, of course, before the recent republication,
which lacks the colour and crispness of the early issue.
[93] "British Artists from Hogarth to Turner."